1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a failure factor identification supporting apparatus and a failure factor identification supporting method, and more particularly to a failure factor identification supporting apparatus and a failure factor identification supporting method for supporting identification of a factor of a failure that occurs in a field device located in a field.
2. Description of the Related Art
Hitherto, devices (hereinafter referred to as “field devices”) such as various sensors and control valves (hereinafter referred to as “valves”) for measuring and controlling the flow rate of fluid have been used in chemical plants and factories (hereinafter referred to as “fields”).
In periodical maintenance of these field devices, it is preferable to select a field device to be actually maintained, from among these many field devices, for the sake of efficiency and cost. Such periodical maintenance is a necessary work for preventing unavoidable failures such as the aging of the valves.
As an example of the technology of supporting determination of whether maintenance of each field device is necessary, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2013-191002 proposes the technology of determining that it is necessary to perform maintenance of a field device whose most recent maintenance is performed a number of days ago, the number of days exceeding a preset reference number of days.
Failures of field devices are classified into, for example, those that gradually progress in accordance with the aging of the field devices themselves and those that unexpectedly occur, such as valve opening errors. Among these failures, those that unexpectedly occur are often recognized as failures of the field devices themselves since they are easily recognizable by the operator.
Actually, however, those failures that unexpectedly occur include failures not caused by breakdowns of the field devices themselves where the failures are recognized. For example, a failure that occurs in a field device, such as a valve located on a pipe, may be caused by a man-caused error, such as an error in an operation performed by an operator on a device upstream of the valve.
It is not easy to identify a factor of a failure of a field device, as has been described above. In general, however, because a manufacturer that manufactured a field device and a user who uses that field device are different companies, if a factor of a failure of the field device is ambiguous, a company or a person responsible for the failure may not be identified, leading to a possible business trouble between the manufacturer and the user.